So… last week I was supposed to post a recap saying we went on a short Halloween-break, but forgot to post it since we were having said break!

Now we’re back, so here’s “last week’s post”, and we’ll continue to post like normal from here :)

Now, it’s not just the ending of Arcade Mode that we’re working on, but also expanding it and cleaning it up so it’s all nice and polished. In this Monday’s meeting, we came up with two new rooms we’d like to try:

First up, a room where you meet the fortune teller Astrid, who tells you which boss is at the end of the floor, and offers you an opportunity to change your fate (that is, for her to change the boss for another one in the pool). Whether or not this will cost you anything we haven’t decided yet – but it’s likely it’ll cost a bit of gold.

The second room we’d like to add is a “Caveling Casino” where you pay gold OR essence for a chance of getting one of a pool of items, which you’ll be able to see beforehand. The items can be things such as equips, buffs, pins, HP pots, or maybe just an apple… We’re considering giving you two chances as well, so if you spent gold on one try, you can spend essence on another – but no more than that.

This addition of essence as a currency on a run is something we’ll likely experiment a bit more with as well, giving you more ways to spend that stuff :)

Finally, we’ve decided to try out a pretty big change – but I’ll have to make a couple tests first to make sure it feels alright… And that is to have each of the shops and special character’s rooms in a run appear inside a specially designed map just for them instead of having them sit in the middle of an ordinary room. So basically the merchant would actually appear in a shop, shadier merchant might appear in a creepy temple like setting, and so on. However, since we don’t want to give away what kind of room you’ll enter in the case of event rooms, I’m gonna have to play around with making an entrance to the house which makes it feel like you came from the outside even though you as a player didn’t see an actual building to enter. It may not make much sense now, but I’ll make a couple tests and you’ll see!

We’ve also been discussing what sort of rewards you’ll get from that chest in the final room before battling either Bishop or Grindea! We want the player to get plenty of rewards, at least three for each level of difficulty, so it won’t just be a reward for the first time you reach the top!

Some of our suggestions so far include:

A diploma that shows you made it. Can be hung on the wall of your house, where it can be inspected showing a proper fancy diploma stating you reached the top floor.

A lood trinket that allows you to keep a Lood with you on your runs.

A Record player which is a furniture item that will change the music inside your house.

Riley as a NPC in Arcadia, who can change the music both in Arcadia and on your runs.

Angel Wings and Demon Wings to decorate your character. We’ll have to try out how this looks with the character’s animations, but if it doesn’t work out we’ll add them as hat versions instead.

A trinket that makes you character levitate when moving and in idle.

A trinket that gives you the same colour scheme as Grindea

and a Cloud hat!

…in no particular order. Do you have any suggestions of your own? We’d love to hear them!

Next up, it’s time to start looking into giving Grindea a proper background instead of the placeholder flying fortress platform she’s currently on! In this sketch, I’m playing around with some aesthethics, trying to give her a place that feels fully her own.

What do you guys think?

 As mentioned before, we wanted to be able to include some indoor areas without having you pass through an actual building first, so I’ve made a little test featuring what it could look like entering a building from Seasonne in this case:

In this example, you’d be in a regular arcade mode Seasonne room, and expect to enter an event room to the right. Instead of going into another outdoor room, you end up in this house instead. Do you think the transition will feel weird seeing as there is no building to enter? We hope that by adding part of the outdoorsy area in the entrance it’ll feel more like you seamlessly transitioned between the two rooms :)

Meanwhile in Fred’s department, it’s all about Grindea, as has been for a while now! Let’s have a look at the most recent animations:

Alright then, we had one final floor to properly design for the final dungeon, and it’s the Dragonbone Dunes floor! As such, we had a little meeting, discussing where we want to take it, seeing as there’s a ton of stuff going on in the desert that we could use.

In the end, we came up with a plan that’s pretty much as follows:

You’ll start off by following a little pathway to the side from where you entered, after which you’ll reach a door that seems to lead to the next floor. However, once you’re about to exit, that massive boulder from your encounter with the Solgem boss appears, forcing you to run down for quite a bit. Now super far away from the exit, you need to find your way back by entering a series of caves where you’ll come across several different challenges:

* One battle challenge where a ruby similar to the one that cursed the Solgem, only it curses each of the other enemy types found in the desert in turn

* One story puzzle where you have to push around statues featuring Bishop, Grindea, Cards and Adventurers… Whatever could it mean?

* One or several math puzzles (not too difficult, since you need to solve them in order to complete Story Mode…)

* A digging challenge where you need to dig up something to allow you to pass through the next door

Not sure we’ll include all of these, but we’re fairly certain on the first two, and we’ll probably want to add at least one of the other two as well! As you can tell, this floor will be a bit longer than the others probably, but seeing as it’s towards the end of the dungeon and each of these challenges won’t take too long, we think that’s alright!

In other news, here are the game’s final four haircut! These will be the last ones needed to finally fill out each slot available! Phew! Let’s have a look at the new styles you can choose from:

While it’s true we’ve been designing on floors as far up as the Desert, it’s not the same as making art for them! Now it’s time for the first part of making that final dungeon Flying Fortress floor!

In this part, I’m gonna clean up the island after it’s been adjusted to its GUN-D4M size, giving it some proper art rather than the temporary sketch version:

And here’s a few more of Fred’s animations for this boss! A lot of Grindea stuff right now, but it’s also one of the most important battles of the game, so it makes sense :)

Time for the second map of the cave system in Pillar Mountains, accessible by climbing the sapling you’ve all been walking past for years now, wondering when you’ll be able to do something about it…. Well, soon it’ll all be happening ;)

And then another version of the previous map, as you climb higher up the pillar:

Finally, we go outdoors, reaching an old abandoned Grindea statue! How curious….

For now though, let’s change the subject to something completely different. Trees! A specific tree, actually. The NPC from Seasonne who you’ll meet in the giant tree stump:

Meanwhile in Fred’s department, it’s all about James Fawke, his fan and of course, the troll fight! Here’s some more sneak peeks:

With the world around us slowly calming down a bit and more and more restrictions being lifted, we have been talking about whether or not to get back into some sort of office. The office hotel we previously used has closed down, but we do have a spare room where we live where we’ve previously housed guests so we’re thinking about turning it into a proper office for the time being.

As such, we made plans to move our desks and computers there as soon as it became available last weekend (Teddy’s mom has been staying over for the last couple months due to the corona virus, but these last couple weeks she’s been intent on moving back to her apartment, which she did on friday).

It’s possible we’ll look into a more permanent office in the future, but before we make any such move we want to see a more permanent decrease in the corona virus havoc that’s been going on. For now, it won’t make much of a difference for the three of us to meet in the office seeing as we don’t really see anyone else anyway, and I think after a couple months working from home it would be good for our motivation to get back to some proper routines and get a proper change of scenery.

Another one of the main topics on our minds lately has been the Pin Collector. Who is he, how will the pins be unlocked and at what part of the game? We’ve decided that he will appear randomly in a room after the player has played a certain amount: not too long, but at least a few runs so that they’re familiar with the way the game works without pins added.

He will appear through a dimension rift which will happen in the midst of a room. Here’s our first prototype of the scene:

Obvious use of placeholders including Marino, of course… haha!

Next, we’ve been playing around with adding some effects to give the impression of the pins scattering away:

This is also still a work in progress! We’re not completely happy with the way the pins literally seem to “scatter like a wind” if you want. We might look into having them scatter from him more like coins from a defeated enemy; or we might keep the effect separate from his appearance altogether. In any case, the testing continues! :)

Two new characters we’re gonna introduce in story mode are part of the fanclub surrounding James Fawkes! Starting off with the fangirl:

And second, that of the fanboy:

These characters will follow James along wherever he appears, cheering him on! Oh my..

And here’s Fred’s renditions of both James and his two fans! We’ve actually decided to add yet another fan to his bunch of followers, but that one will be added next week: